It’s quite clear the main focus of HL2 was developing the Source engine, this is evident by how lacking it is in all aspects compared to HL1 in exchange for physics, facial animation, and improved graphical fidelity among other obvious clues. Here is the main issue: these don’t add to gameplay in meaningful ways.

Starting with facial animation, something people praise HL2 for. Is it good? Yes. Does it add any value to gameplay and its mechanics? No. Would I want advanced facial animation over good gameplay which is what HL2 offers you? No. Furthermore, body animation during cutscenes in HL2 is laughable. It’s janky and provides very poor contrast to the advanced facial animation. Furthermore, characters (even citizens and metrocops) often have pauses where they stop idle before engaging in a new animation.

Onto physics. The game introduces a physics engine because Valve thought it would be cool to have the player’s actions truly affect the world for maximum interactivity. While the physics engine is cool, it adds little to gameplay mechanically (even though theoretically it can add a lot) and it has numerous issues that actually get in the way of gameplay. A big issue in HL2 is getting stuck on random shit. The player gets stuck on milk crates, water cans, and anything else below the knees that’s in the player’s path. The obvious solution would be to make the player not clip with these if they interact to with his legs, but that’s too complicated for Valve apparently. Next is getting stuck on geometry, which happens relatively often due to geometry being more complex yet geometry detection being similar to HL. Neither should occur, and they actively inhibit gameplay. A good example of this is getting stuck on the geometry of the rooftops when first escaping from the cops, which happens often if you look at playthroughs. Furthermore, physics are used to the point you wish they were never developed for HL2. Every single puzzle involves physics and these are irritating when you realize they serve no reason other than to show off the engine for the game.

Another issue with physics is that, with them being used far too much, they are often used as a crutch in level design – as opposed to designing arenas for combat, the level designers occasionally design levels to have interactive physics, or show off physics instead of providing locations that will provide good gameplay to the player.

By far the biggest issue with physics is Ravenholm, an entire chapter based around physics. Yeah, remember how I said zombies suck ass? Zombies are a really shitty enemy type, because they are never a threat to the player for reasons I elaborated upon above. Classic zombies are slower than actual corpses, fast zombies only deal five damage per swipe then take a second pause, and poison zombies/headcrabs are never used in conjunction with other enemy types aside from the inside the EP1 Hospital.

Ravenholm is a boring slog, it’s effectively one giant ebin cinematic set piece because there’s no threat of the player dying unless they go afk and let the shitty zombies kill them or are dumb enough to die from their own traps. It is of the least challenge in the entire game, only liked for its horror elements and atmosphere as opposed to actual gameplay. To make matters worse, ammo is arbitrarily limited to encourage the player to use the gravity gun, because if they didn’t use it then Valve wouldn’t be showing off the Source engine and HL2 would be for naught wouldn’t it? By the time Ravenholm ends, you want nothing to do with the gravity gun again and indeed, if you watch any playthrough most players did not use the gravity gun 99.999% of the time outside of ravenholm. To make matters ever worse, for nearly 1/3 of EP1 this is the only weapon you’re allowed to use. Fuck you, nearly this entire franchise is meant to showcase Valve’s engine and if you don’t like it then you need to go back to CoD bro. Also, Grigori should not exist. Why couldn’t the player be alone during Ravenholm? Let me bask in the atmosphere, motherfucker.

Now, here’s the thing: The physics and gravity gun in Ravenholm are a gimmick. Too bad that EVERY chapter outside of the first two has its own gimmick, the most infamous being the airboat sections: -Water Hazard has the airboat and a chase sequence that goes on for what feels like a couple of months -Ravenholm has the gravity gun and physics (its name during development was phystown for fucks sake) -Coast has the car, so they are reusing a gimmick from the previous chapter -Sandtraps has the player waste 10-20 minutes of every playthrough getting past the sand -Nova Prospekt has antlion allies and bugbait -Rebellion has some of the worst squad A.I. in a video game, and also you cannot kill them because playtesters were too retarded to NOT engage in friendly fire, thanks Valve for hiring your parents and retarded friends who have never touched a game to playtest for you -Citadel contains a powertrip with the gravity gun that is impossible to fail at

—Now you might be asking, why does each chapter have a gimmick unlike HL1? This is why: IF HL2 LEFT THE PLAYER ALONE WITH THE ENEMY/WEAPON DEPTH AND VARIETY HL2 PROVIDES, IT WOULD BE BORING, UNINSPIRED AND BLATANTLY SHALLOW.

HL1 didn’t need gimmicks because its gameplay as I have stated countless time had inherent strategy attached to it, each weapon had a role and each enemy had to be heavily adapted to win. In HL2, weapons do not have roles like they once did versus various enemy types (there aren’t even enough enemy types for this to apply) and enemies are defeated with minimal interactivity. To make up for this, Valve adds a shitty gimmick each chapter (that totally coincidentally are mostly designed to show off various technical achievements of the game) to vary gameplay and often annoy the shit out of the player, especially on subsequent playthroughs, instead of offering them a good game like HL1.

Ultimately, when anyone praises Half-Life 2 they almost never talk about the gameplay, they talk about its advancements which are as useful as spoiled milk in hindsight unlike Half-Life 1 which pulled no gimmicks. Half-Life was Quake but put into a realistic world the player can be immersed into, where one encounters weird and interesting shit from other dimensions, as well as Black Mesa itself. It pulled no gimmicks aside from first-person platforming, which, though many people dislike it greatly, there was at least an attempt made to make it fun as opposed to just being designed to show off the engine, which Half-Life only delegated to the first 15 minutes.

Even back in 2004 these were just that: gimmicks that showed off technological improvements of the Source engine. They did not provide meaningful gameplay mechanics just as they do not provide them now, making them useless from the day they became legally available to the public, leaving us with a heavily downgraded version of Half-Life but with gimmicks demonstrating what Source is capable of. This is less than appealing.